More often than you may be ready to admit, you hold back from expressing how you feel, from sharing what you sense and intuit. In essence, you muffle some of your abilities and hesitate or prevent yourself from realizing certain dreams.

Witholding the truth is always potentially a lie, and each new situation calls for a moral decision. Do you keep things to yourself and if so, do you do it out of self-interest, a desire for power, for approval, for the interest of the person from whom information is hidden? Maybe you are not aware of the why.

Deciding to be more honest with yourself may seem to be an extraordinary task. It would require the never-ending burden of self-discipline. This helps explain why many people decide to live a life of minimal honesty. They brainwash themselves into believing its too hard to change or, not even in their interest.

This said, rewards exist for meeting the challenges of living with integrity. Although your course may seem frequently diverted, or plans suddenly thwarted, you also underestimate rather than overestimate your foresight. And, excuses are not necessarily bad. Consider ten excuses for withholding truth and how similar views help or hinder you;

1) You do not believe you are ready. Something within you may echo you do not have the courage, ability, skills or presumed experience required to go the next step. What you believe becomes your reality. People also read your vibes.

2)You imagine people will criticize. Part of you fears other people will judge or not understand. Yet many people actually share or resonate with you, and also tell themselves nobody else will get it. Your self-doubt leads to misperceptions that may prevent you from connecting with kindred spirits.

3) You assume things are not in your control. If part of you senses untapped skills or potential, then you may reason these things will be sharpened and a plan clarified by fate if you are mean to use them. Another way to view this is fear of success or failure. Either way, you remain where you are.

4) You find solace in secretiveness. Something may appeal about keeping knowledge to yourself. It is said the meek and humble are wise and silent. The expression of thoughts, feelings and perceived insight may seem suitably withheld. This is not always for the purpose of self-interest.

5) You fear embarassment. You may have nurtured feelings for someone, or value something you sense others will not value as you do. You fear your views or feelings will not be appreciated or shared. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

6) You argue timing is everything. Perhpas you are an expert at postponing or putting off decisions. You may be assesing and re-assessing the capacity of another person to use the information for reasons you would support. That you contemplate means you resist listening to your gut. You decide the right time when you relinquish the need to control.

7) You are too proud. You feel more secure in the thought that you are not contributing to the confusion of the world. Your opinion of yourself would not permit you to shatter the image you have created. Appearances can be deceiving.

8) Your views conflict with your entourage. Rather than sense non-conformity is the way to go, you may be willing to sacrifice what feels right for what appears to be right in the minds of people you respect. You choose to put their needs or expectations before your own, whatever the cost.

9) You prefer the hard way. The more honest you are, the easier it is to continue. The more lies you tell yourself or others, the harder it is to keep track, and the more necessary it is to keep lying out of fear of being found out.

10) Someone told you to do it. You may confide your dream, your perspective or sense of the truth to someone who cautions you who to share this with. The exercise of discipline is demanding insofar as it requires you to be flexible and insightful. To be free, you must be willing to take responsibility for yourself and also to develop the capacity to reject responsibility that is not your own. You determine what needs to be organized or feels right as spontaneous.

Reader Comments (24)

Hi Liara,Oh, this, Liara, really is a powerful post. One that reminds me how we can let these excuses in if we're not careful. And for what? I'm finding that the more I open up to the truth (and break away from these 10 excuses you have listed) - the more liberated, the more free I feel. And yet that used to be the exact reason I didn't open up to the truth - because I felt it would not be freeing, not be liberating. So far from the truth that thinking was. It doesn't mean that sometiimes these still don't come into play - they do. And then, though, I try to catch them - and change...to not allow these excuses to rule...

Lance, many people are unaware they withold the truth from themselves. It is more comon to consciously withold the truth from other people for reasons you may judge necessary or acceptable. People will say, "he does not need to know that," or "that would only discourage or hurt him." People do not always decide what to dilvulge based on how their action will affect their own personal growth. This would require a certain level of awareness. A deeper level of awareness is necessary to attune to the self in order to overcome core fear or illusion of a need to hide.

This is a great post and describes how I was most of my life. I was able to use a label to hide behind for many years; introverted, but the descriptions above are more suitable. I would keep quiet in classes, and then grew up to keep quiet at work. I always felt that my opinion did not matter, or that people would criticize me. Then, I came to realize that it did not matter what others thought- well it matters, but it does not have to dictate what I say anymore. Now I find I do not over think things, I just say them, because those thoughts are pure, from the heart or gut. They have not been cycled through the inner critic or ego. Thanks Liara- I love your site design!!

Jay, human beings are said to arrive in their physical bodies in a state of fearlessness. Then, it is believed that external conditioning slowly chips away at that open perspective until people come to live their lives at differnt levels of fear. My own view is that our lives offer infinite opportunities for us to choose to return to that original state of fearlessness. We can only do so by bravely choosing to work though our thoughts, feelings and behaviours to uncover and heal our own mis- perceptions.

Hi there, how are you doing? I bet you can't wait for your book to be done, hm? I am excited for you. This is another compelling post that covers all the bases (and all the excuses). I hope you'll stop by to see my latest post on my personal journey.

Donna, great to hear from you again! Each person is going through a journey of revelations about personal excuses. As you choose to work through your own, you discover a world of choices and experiences beyond that.

While I was reading this, I was reminded of the book "17 Lies That Are Holding You Back and The Truth That Will Set You Free" by Steve Chandler.

What's amazing is there's so much potential for growth and learning for all of us. While I'm much more aware of my own inner truth and therefore can spot a self manufactured lie more readily, I have much more work to do in terms of ironing the rest of them out of existence.

You'd be amazed what goes through my mind (or maybe not since you wrote this very compelling and thought provoking article) is when I want to talk to someone about something, I sometimes find my mind telling me "he won't be interested because......" I find myself making assumptions before they happen!

So that's one area where I need to improve on - stop making assumptions about how a person will react or say or do or think. If I'm led to say something to someone, I just need to do it and be okay with whatever happens. Deep down we all need and want approval but I'm learning that all I need is my own approval! Isn't that amazing or what?

Stephen, in truth, you have never lost your unwavering self-acceptance. No human being ever has. What occurs is a temporary amnesia that each person creates in order to work backwards through their own self-created illusions. Part of you is curious about what it feels like to quietly superimpose qualities and beliefs. So, you do it for the benefit of experience. When you arrive to gain sufficient insight into a situation, you raise awareness and move on.

In my later middle-age, I became far more honest, and now try to avoid lying at all. On my blog, I do omit facts to stay anonymous however.I learned to lie to protect myself from my mother's anger as a child, then began making up things in an effort to try to impress folks in school. It's amazing what we learn to do to aviod punishment n unpleasantness.I believe rejection and trivialization by others of presented truths is also a motovating factor for future deception.

Our societies encourage dishonesty, and reward us with less conflict to be so. Honesty is too often the more difficult path!

I love how you have listed all of the aspects that hold us back. I know why I refrain from saying things, but this post challenges me in terms of whether I want to actually continue with so much holding back...

Snaggletooth, as you raise awareness, you put yourself in a more informed position to make future decisions. What you decide is best for you at a given moment is based on whether you are ready to confront sources of your fear or, work to dissolve the fear itself. Life experience is meant to teach people the value of honesty. Your life experience reveals you came to view lying as a tool to protect you, so you clinged to that idea until it no longer served you. People think aging makes it easier to reflect back on life stages and understand your past motives. This is really a level of maturity. You move to observe rather than judge. You move beyond what you assumed was right or wrong and identify what you decided was necessary for survival.

Juliet, everybody holds back some elements of their perception and what it uncovers. This is due to fear of something. It is the evolution of your inner self that helps you figure out not only reasons for your fear, but also the underlying sources or reasons why you permit it to evolve.

I can think of another reason why I withhold the truth sometimes. And I don't consider it 'lying' so much as selecting what I have to say in a specific situation. Sometimes I withhold what I 'really feel because I'm afraid of hurting the other person. I'll talk around the issue...maybe focus on the positive or something like that. Some things are just better left unsaid...

Grace, to become aware of withholding truth is a stage of growth. The justify your reasons "why" invites new levels of growth. You will selectively share information with different people on what you decide is a "need-to-know" basis. The same experience is often rephrased for parents, grandparents, siblings, friends and so on. You decide what is moral, ethical, acceptable or desirable. You are the one who decides what feels right. You are the judge and jury.

Loving Annie, your soul knows these feelings are helpful. When your unconscious is making an effort to get your attention, this is an invitation to listen. The essence of what you need is always revealed to you. Whether you are willing to pay closer attention and be receptive is something else. Do what makes sense in the moment.

I believe that people have a harder time being honest with themselves, than with other people

Of course, logically, that doesn't make sense. In order to be honest with other people, you have to be honest with yourself, by default.

However, I believe that people create their own version of the truth. It's a lot like what Obi Wan Kenobi said in Return of the Jedi. The truths that we cling to depend on our point of view. And when we refuse to look inside of ourselves and be true to ourselves, then we create an distorted sense of reality. It's a lot easier to be truthful to THAT reality, then it is to look inward and answer the tought questions.

Trey, the common trend to confuse reality with a conditioned feeling of reality, permits all sorts of self-deception. Obi Wan Kenobi reminds you, "The force will be with you always." That is, the energy that creates reality surrounds each person. It cannot be created or destroyed. It can be explored differently by those who become aware of its existence and who find their inner courage to look inward and answer those nagging questions.

When you suppress your true self, your ability to express how you feel, one of two things can happen: 1. You conform to social norms to avoid any of what Liara explained; or, 2. You become someone completely differently than who you really are to avoid dealing with with what Liara explained. Which ever way you decide to go, neither one is really who you are. So ask yourself if suppressing emotions is really worth it.

Bruno, you have a clever way of encouraging readers not to be afraid of their own inner truth. Thank you! As each person evolves, they come to appreciate the value of knowing the stages they experience. Each one matters.